The sixty-second Cheltenham Music Festival runs from
30 June to 15 July.

Festival Director, Martyn Brabbins, has chosen Scotland
as the theme running through the Festival although
I believe there’s an unannounced, subsidiary
theme, of which more in a moment.

Picking up the Scottish theme the composer-in-residence
this year will be Sally Beamish. She’s lived
in Scotland for many years and her fiftieth birthday
falls this year. Several of her works will be performed,
including a Concerto for Accordion and Orchestra,
which receives its world première in the opening
concert (June 30), when Brabbins conducts the Hallé
orchestra in a programme that also includes Mahler’s
Fourth symphony and – another piece with Scottish
associations – Mendelssohn’s ‘Hebrides’
Overture.

Another Beamish première will form part of
the King’s Singers recital in the wonderful
surroundings of Tewkesbury Abbey (4 July) when her
Lost and Found in the Forest of Dean will sit
beside Renaissance music from Scotland and Spain and
close harmony arrangements of popular songs.

The following night Martyn Brabbins directs the Nash
Ensemble in an intriguing programme at Cheltenham’s
Pittville Pump Room – another marvellous setting
for music. On the bill will be the chamber arrangement
of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and
the surviving movement of his uncompleted Piano
Quartet in A minor. There will also be short pieces
by James MacMillan and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, both
written in celebration of Sally Beamish’s birthday
and both receiving their first performances.

The Festival usually comes up with some enticing song
recitals. This year’s hot tickets, I predict,
will be morning recitals by two very fine British
singers, Roderick Williams (9 July) and Sarah Connolly
the following day. Williams, who will be partnered
by Iain Burnside, will give an enticing programme
including Schumann’s Liederkreis and
Finzi’s Let Us Garlands Bring. Sarah
Connolly, also working with her regular recital partner,
Eugene Asti, offers a mixed programme including songs
by Mahler, Grieg and both Robert and Clara Schumann.

Another composer celebrating a milestone birthday
this year is Richard Rodney Bennett. Rather disappointingly
I can’t spot any of his concert works in the
programme. However, Bennett has a busy evening on
10 July. At 6 pm he’s in the Town Hall for a
review of his life and work both in performance and
in discussion with Edward Seckerson. At 7.30, after
a quick dash across town, he and vocalist Claire Martin
perform a cabaret supper, entitled ‘Nice and
Easy’, at The Daffodil restaurant. This superbly
restored former art-deco cinema should be a fine venue
both in terms of ambience and gastronomy.

One more stand-out event to mention. Pianist Paul
Lewis has been garnering enthusiastic reviews for
his ongoing complete Beethoven sonata cycle. He brings
three sonatas to the Pittville Pump Room on 12 July,
including the ‘Pastoral’ and the
mighty ‘Hammerklavier’.

I mentioned an unspoken, subsidiary theme. To me it
seems that participation by local musicians is a thread
running through the programme. For one thing, there’s
Choral Evensong at Tewkesbury Abbey on most days at
5.00 pm sung by the Abbey School Then the Gloucestershire
Youth Orchestra gives an enterprising programme in
the Town Hall (8 July), including music by Malcolm
Arnold and Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto.
The Orlando Consort are in Tewkesbury Abbey on 11
July to perform Machaut’s Messe de Nostre
Dame and works by Tarik O’Regan, James MacMillan
(another première) and Robert Carver. However,
there’s added interest in this concert because
the Orlando Consort will be joined by the fine local
choir, the Oriel Singers, who are the 2005 BBC Choir
of the Year. A fascinating prospect, in all sorts
of ways, is the event on July 15, when throughout
the day young musicians (from Grade 1 standard and
higher) will be coached by principals from the Orchestra
of the Age of Enlightenment in Handel’s Music
for the Royal Fireworks, culminating in a performance
in the Town Hall at 4.00 pm. It should be what Handel
himself might have called a “splendid noyse”.

The local participation reaches its apogee later that
same day when Martyn Brabbins closes the Festival
with a performance of Berlioz’s monumental Grande
messe des morts. The performance will be given
by a massed choir of 200 voices, drawn from local
choral societies, joined by the Cheltenham Symphony
Orchestra. Lest anyone should think that the CSO is
“just an amateur orchestra” let me hasten
to assure them that the orchestra is comprised of
the cream of local players and has established something
of a reputation for itself in recent years by giving
splendid performances of “blockbuster”
works such as Strauss’s Ein Alpensinfonie.
Opportunities to hear this Berlioz masterpiece are
limited by the sheer scale of the piece and the forces
required so this is an event not to be missed and
it should provide a suitably spectacular finale to
the 2006 Festival.

John Quinn

Full details of the complete festival
programme can be obtained at
www.cheltenhamfestivals.com
or from the Festival Box Office at Town Hall, Imperial
Square, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL50 1QA, United
Kingdom. The Box Office telephone number is 01242
227979